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Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
101–110 of 200 posts
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#102i was a security guard at an art museum for a long time. it was the only job i could find after being laid off from my software gig. thanks for sharing
This is odd. What country and period was it? Before Covid, everyone on LinkedIn was bombarded with job offers as and soon as they created an account and put anything IT related on it.
USA/2022
I was a php dev. Sort of the Wild West over here
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#103The article itself is fantastic. However, this is a great example of what makes catnip for HN - 1) Use scientific terms (e.g. vector fields, waves resonance) 2) Cite tech influencers (e.g. Sholto Douglas, Tyler Cowen) 3) Make the subject an abstract novel field that most developers or tech folk don't really pay attention and use #1 and #2 to make it relevant
Honestly, the entire blog feels that way: referencing the same old tropes and personalities in a slightly novel context. A sort of a comfort read for the web2.0 nostalgia crowd.
I guess this approach worked, since it allowed the author to go on writing full time in Denmark (HCoL), which is an achievement these days.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#104The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…
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Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#105I think the biggest win for this job was not the six points identified, but the author gained their boss's trust; got project alignment to the organization's mission, and earned more autonomy.
In essence the task-oriented leading was switched to area-of-responsibility leading. That is, instead of giving a list of tasks to complete by the author, an AoR was given, and all tasks initially verified, then allowed to move forward as the author saw it fit. It is task-oriented vs. AoR-Oriented leadership.
Basically, in large part this worked because of the job context and the leadership of the boss.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess this is why a sucessful genius can tape a banana to a wall while a run of the mill worker can only restore Notre Dame to its original state.
No that is more about money laundering
It's more about people with a lot of money hoping to sell it for a greater return, while maybe also having shit taste in art. In five years it'll be at an auction and sell to some other person with too much money in hopes of making a profit on it later on.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. That's quite a niche view. In fact art is an overlap of many different kinds of markets selling to many different kinds of customers - from people buying phone wallpapers online, to tourists buying souvenirs on holiday, to oligarchs laundering money through prestige purchases. And many others. A community gallery is going to i…
> By your definition, super-successful kitsch-meisters like Thomas Kinkade are great artists. And Vincent van Gogh is not. Or was not a great artist, then he died and become a great artist somehow suddenly after his death. (at least by that definition, which just to make it clear, I don't agree with.)
I'm fine with "remembered somehow" as another useful definition for "a great artist".
More cynically: van Gogh was only successfully monetized posthumously.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#108The problem here is that I don’t trust the author on being able to tell who is the “best artist”. Clearly he has opinions. But for example in point 3, he says he can predict which exhibition will be great based on how easy it is to work with the artist. He predicts that some exhibition will be crap and he is right! Which sounds impressive until you notice that he is not measuring his judgement against something objec…
I have worked a little bit with "artists". Too many of them are caught up in their vision, and apparently incapable of dealing with reality. Too many of them believe that their vision is so, so unique that everyone else should sort out any problems. There's one guy where I live, whom I tried to help out several times. I would invest lots of effort handling the practical stuff: flyers, text, web site, etc. Little than…
True.
Part of Gage Art Academy's mission is to create working artists. Students learn about (and struggle with) how to get paid. Stuff like how to price their works, balancing one's own artistic expression with making stuff that sells, how to pull off an exhibit, etc.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long does setting up an exhibition take, and what kind of hours are you expecting? 4-8 are workday hours? And what kind of question needs to be answered that fast, but wasn't important enough to be asked several days earlier? My feeling is that there should be very few such questions, few enough that each artist can safely take half a day if they get one.
If everyone is there to set up your exhibition at a certain agreed upon time, then you should be engaged and answering any questions immediately if not sooner, regardless of how long it takes to set up the exhibition.
Certain agreed upon time? Yes, of course. You should probably be there for most of it too.
But once you're covering multiple days, no, a single person should not be expected to respond lightning fast the entire time. And the several day scenario is what the comment I replied to talked about.
Re: Lessons I learned working at an art gallery
#110People here in the comments seem to focus on whether it is possible to predict an artist's success based on secondary "civic" virtues, and criticize the author for having subjective criteria for what "success" means. I'd argue that independently of how you measure success, all other things being equal, having diligence and other civic virtues will get you further, on average. That said, the most interesting lessons a…
I think the point is more that there are indicators that a person is in conflict with their own mission. Struggles to respond, complains, focuses on the immaterial. I think OP is completely right. When a person is aligned, they get out of their own way, this people are easy to differentiate. One produces mediocre work, the other produces great stuff. I also agree it’s within the power of the individual to be either.